Victoria Mines, Ontario

Victoria Mines and Mond were established by German-born British chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond as company towns for the Mond Nickel Company in 1899. The mine itself was originally prospected in 1886 by Henry Ranger. Mond, having created the Mond process for extracting and purifying nickel in 1890, purchased the mine site in 1899 to ship the ores to a refinery in Clydach, Wales. Operations at the mine began in February of 1901, with production reaching 5,000 tons per month by 1915. The diversity of the community, including its linguistic diversity, was reflected in the organization of miners. For example, a Finnish shift supervisor, Matti Manninen, mainly supervised Finns on his shift. The community was laid out to the north of the Canadian Pacific line, with a station built in 1904. Victoria Mine had an assortment of businesses and services, including a butcher shop, barbershop, dry goods and grocery retailers, a bowling alley, a Roman Catholic church, a Presbyterian church, and public and separate schools. Housing at the town included an apartment building, three boarding houses, and fifty single dwellings. Much like Mond, Victoria Mines had a diverse community, including a small Italian area. == Abandonment ==

Starting in the early 1910s, Mond Nickel began to expand its operations around the Sudbury area, and the output of Garson Mine began to surpass that of Victoria Mine. The smelter at Victoria Mine was deemed to be too distant from Monds higher output mine, and a new smelter was opened in Coniston in 1913. In the same year, the Victoria Mines smelter was closed, and many of the smelter employees relocated to Coniston. Numerous buildings were dismantled and moved by rail to Coniston or Worthington, including the Anglican and Presbyterian churches which still stand in Coniston. The public school closed in 1914, and the remaining students from Victoria Mine attended school in Mond. Although several residents remained at Victoria Mines, none of the structures remain today.While the smelter closed in 1913, Victoria Mine continued operating until 1923. With the closure of the mine, Mond was also abandoned. The last house at Mond was removed in 1936. == See also ==